So you can imagine my dilemma when I would overhear an order-taker saying: “The Veggie Wedgie? Yeah, its got a bunch of vegetables on it.” Or the Northwest… “It’s got fish and shrimp and onions and stuff.” Ouch!

Well-crafted descriptions on the menu were not getting transferred correctly over the phone. What to do… what to do?

And so I set out to find a fool-proof way to insure that each pizza would always be portrayed in the most flattering way.

I immediately ripped down the cheat-sheets in the kitchen… they listed generic items in the order they were to be placed on the pizza. This insured consistency, but at the same time – they programmed my crew to speak generically too.

Then I marched up front and changed every pop-up description in my POS to read the same way. Now when a customer asks about a pizza – the order taker has been immersed in the right language from the menu, to the cheat-sheets, to the POS descriptions. Pretty hard to mess it up.

Now, another thing I quickly caught on to was this: Until we got really busy, we did our prep during the day (later on it was a night shift). Anyway… people coming in while we were roasting garlic – would roll their eyes and say… “man that smells delicious!”

Bingo! So, we started roasting a few garlic cloves just before dinner rush… and kept putting fresh cloves in the oven as needed. Now, customers could really lock in the fact that we were baking fresh homemade pizza (you never smell fresh roasted garlic at fast-food pizza shops).

It’s no secret - the smell of coffee, fresh baked cookies or bread will help sell a house – because they invoke feelings of “home.”

Sensory input conjures up emotions, desires and memories. It sells products everyday. In fact… that “new” car smell… comes straight out of a spray can.